Gazette columnist Andrea Ayvazian’s spectacular op-ed piece about dignity versus contempt has moved me and continues to have a daily effect on my life, both personally and professionally [“Contempt divides, dignity unites,” Gazette, Sept. 18]. Her column and the workshop looked at this issue from a global and social perspective.
As a psychotherapist, I look at it from an individual internal perspective. When she quotes, Arthur Brooks “we have a cultural addiction to contempt” I reframe this individually. We all have an irrational midbrain whose job it is to seek what could go wrong , to look for threats. From this primitive point of view, it is easy to hold others in contempt. Andrea gives us an eight-point scale to measure our own patterns of dealing with others with contempt or dignity. And again, I look internally. And I see that we usually hold ourselves with less dignity and more contempt compared to how we treat others. It is so helpful to be aware of our tendency to hold ourselves and others in contempt and to try to challenge that. Thank you, Andrea.
Peter Hirschman
Florence